The Dirty Monk (Alfred Lord Tennyson), 1865Albumen print, mounted on card. Signed and annotated 'From life. Registered photograph. Copyright Julia Margaret Cameron. Freshwater I. of W.' in ink on the mount, and also bearing Tennyson's signature in ink and '5371' in pencil in another hand. The reverse of mount annotated by the photographer 'Genuine Autograph (JMC)' in pencil, and with pencil annotation 'Dupl. from Usher Gal., 1865' in another hand.Print from top of arch 25.9 x 20.5cm (10 3/6 x 8 1/6in).

Footnotes

This portrait of Tennyson was given its now celebrated title, 'Dirty Monk', by the sitter himself, and is the image he declared his second favourite of all taken of him: "I prefer the Dirty Monk to others of me... Except one by Mayall" (Robert Woof, Tennyson 1809-1892: A Centenary Celebration, The Wordsworth Trust, 1992, no. 21, p.16).

The example offered here was originally in the possession of the Tennyson family and was offered at Sotheby's Belgravia in 1980 as part of a series of twenty-seven lots sold by order of the Tennyson Trustees. The catalogue entry from that date erroneously describes Tennyson's signature on the mount as a facsimile. Part of the original deposit made by the Tennyson family to the City of Lincoln in 1963, the photograph was at one time held at the Usher Gallery in Lincoln, accounting for the pencil annotation on the reverse of the mount.

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